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Equitable Opportunity Radio: Anchor Institutions and Community Wealth Building

Mike Hancox, Vernice Miller-Travis, Carl Schneebeck

Co-founder Ted Howard talks about the role anchor institutions and worker collaboratives play in building a more inclusive economy in this newly released interview by Equitable Opportunity Radio. Listen to the podcast free on iTunes to learn more about our work in Cleveland and more.

On this episode of Equitable Opportunity radio, host Mike Hancox and co-host Vernice Miller Travis interview Ted Howard, the Co-founder and Executive Director of The Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland. Ted explains the role anchor institutions and worker collaboratives play in building a more inclusive economy. Anchor institutions are large, placed-based, nonprofit organizations that tend not to relocate. Anchor institutions can have a major impact on local economies and tend to be major employers. According to community-wealth.org, “If the economic power of these anchor institutions were more effectively harnessed, they could contribute greatly to community wealth building. The largest and most numerous of such nonprofit anchors are universities and non-profit hospitals (often called "eds and meds").” In Cleveland, The Democracy Collaborative has worked with anchor institutions like The Cleveland Clinic to create the Evergreen Cooperatives. The Evergreen Cooperatives seek to create community wealth and thriving businesses by giving workers an ownership stake in the businesses that they are creating. The three existing Evergreen Cooperatives focus on local food production, solar energy retrofits, and laundry services. Tune in to learn about production, solar energy retrofits, and laundry services. Tune in to learn about the impact this work has had in Cleveland and what the future of community wealth building might look like.